AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 4K Video Card Review

Does the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 play games well at 4K resolution? What game settings work best at 4K, and how does it compare to GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti? Ten games are tested, new and old, DX11, DX12, and Vulkan at playable game settings and pushed to the max in this all out 4K brawl.

Introduction

AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 64 has now been launched two whole months on August 14th 2017. The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 is AMD’s fastest video card for high-end gaming currently. The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 fills in a spot previously occupied by the AMD Radeon RX Fury X. We have compared performance between these two video cards to find out real-world performance, and clock-for-clock performance differences.

The $499 AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 also competes with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 on price and performance. In our launch evaluation of the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 we compared it with the competition. We found that it does indeed trade blows in performance with the GeForce GTX 1080 at 1440p. We also found it is a capable 1440p performer, allowing a decent 1440p gameplay experience for the first time from AMD. The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 also allows another possible potential, the ability to play at 4K with a single-video card from AMD.

One area we did not cover fully in our launch evaluation was the Radeon RX Vega 64’s viability at 4K (3840x2160) resolution. With an educated real-world gaming experience on the Vega 64 we speculated on the performance based on our 1440p experiences stating that this video card wasn’t fit for 4K gaming, instead recommending GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for the realm of 4K gaming.

Despite having an educated gaming experience at 1440p to base this statement on there are some that disagreed or wanted it tested. It was theorized at launch from feedback of our readers that maybe, just maybe, AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 actually pulls ahead at 4K compared to the competition. Maybe Radeon RX Vega 64 is meant to thrive at higher resolutions which are less CPU dependent? Perhaps it is 4K where Vega 64 comes closer to GeForce GTX 1080 Ti performance? Well we are going to definitively answer all of that today in today’s evaluations.

In this evaluation today, we are going to test the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 at 4K (3840x2160) in no less than ten games, with DX11 and DX12 and Vulkan as well as some brand new games mixed with old. Now two whole months later we have newer drivers to use on AMD Radeon RX Vega 64, so maybe that can help with performance uplifts as well. We will be using the latest AMD Radeon Crimson ReLive 17.9.3 driver.

We will compare AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. We will find what game settings are playable on the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64. We will also make a comparison pushing all three video cards to insanely high game settings at 4K to push them to their limits, and compare. This will represent a full-fledge of gaming scenarios to get to the bottom of which video card is the best value for 4K gaming.

On each gaming page you will find first what we found playable on the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 at 4K. We then matched the same settings on the other video cards for an apples-to-apples test. Then we pushed each game up to the highest in-game "Ultra" settings to push the video cards very hard at 4K just to see how they compare when being pushed as hard as possible for graphics performance at 4K.